Output from Type Setter... what are you getting?!

[paco]

I need to enhance my possibility to do V-carving; both from fonts and 2D design... I test Type Setter to see if I could get more fonts V-carved: out of around 30 fonts test from Windows XP, Windows 95, Fonts package from 3D café, fonts from Corel Draw... and I get poor result toolpaths.

Here what it's look like...


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Do any body get better results than this?!?! And from which font librairy?

[bill.young]

Hey Paco,

What version of the ShopBot software are you using, and what fonts are giving you these results? What happens if you use a standard font like Times New Roman...do you get the same results?

Bill

[paco]

I have tested 3.3.4 Alpha and 2.39 yesterday... Here the today result from Times New Roman...

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This is one of the best output I can get from Type Setter. I have point some "bad" sectors of the output... is this normal from Type Setter? Out of the 30 fonts I tested some 10-15 crashed the software!?!?!...

[bill.young]

Hey Paco,

Most of those points in Times New Roman are in places where it has to make sharp corners in the letter or where there are nodes in the letter glyph. Sometimes it's hard to visualize what the bit is doing from the preview...have you tried cutting the Times New Roman file?

I'm not sure about the other screen shots...I've only seen that sort of thing in those "2000 fonts for $5" CDs because the quality of the fonts is pretty poor. What fonts did you use in the first 3 screen shots?

When you say 10-15 of the fonts crashed the software, do you mean that they didn't create files or that they really crashed the software and shut down Typesetter? What are the specs on your computer...cpu and memory?

Bill

[paco]

No and I can't spend my time testing V-carving fonts to see if I can use them with customer projet... please don't take it bad but I need good results to charge $$ to customers...
"Advert Regular" is the font used in the first 3D screen shot, the next is "Comic Sans MS" and the third is "Impact"... and it's not the worst!
In fact the software did'nt shut down; some like half of the problematic fonts frozed the software in Vcarve.exe and the other half, I've been announce by Type Setter that it could'nt use this font.
I have 1.29GHz CPU and 96.0 MB of RAM...
Do you consider Windows default fonts to be "bad" fonts? And thoses that were from Corel... do you know 'em to be "bad" fonts?

[bill.young]

Paco,

There are some bad Windows and Corel fonts as far as v-carving goes, at least for the algorithm that the v-carve kernel uses. This doesn't necessarily mean that it does a bad job of cutting the letters (though sometimes it does), but usually means that it makes extra moves where there are extra nodes in the glyph, or nodes that are on top of others. I'll cut some samples of Impact and Comic Sans this weekend and see how they look...I don't think I've cut either of them before.

We haven't gotten reports of vcarve freezing before...could you email the name of the fonts that caused it to me and we'll see if we can figure out what's causing it.

Bill

[jsfrost]

Paco,
Your post led me do do some experimenting early this morning, and the results suggest there may be algorithmic issues in typesetter. Getting very specific, Using a newly loaded 3.3.4 on an alpha, I created a Typesetter part file for a Times New Roman lower case t sized at 3 inches and cut with a .5 invh 90 degree V. The on screen tool path shows significant deviation from common sense expectation at the base curve of the t. I thought perhaps that portion of the cut was shallow(thus not likely visable), so I single stepped to the line where the "surprise" is cut, and found this to be a deeper than the surounding area (stepping further 3.3.4 crashed). The vectors for the TNR t seem very well behaved when examined in Part Wizard.

Side issue: How do you capture the screen shots in your posts? It's probably easy once you know how?

Jim Frost

[paco]

From what you wish to capture...
"Print screen" KEY...
Open "Paint" windows software...
Paste... you should see your screen capture from "Print screen"...
clic on selection tool to unselect the current selection...
select the region you wish to use...
Cut or copy...
Open a new file (no need to save the current file)...
Paste your selection in the newly open file... and save it!
There are other "screen capture" software in some drawing/image software but this method is already available to you in windows... Remember though that TSB only take 400 X 400 pics and must be smaller than 25 Kb...

Soooo... did you get good results or not? (Sorry; I'm a Canadian frog so I sometime have difficulty translating... thank you for understanding. Please, tell us more about your observations...

Last evening, I could'nt get Type Setter to "freeze" since it "remember which font is problematic... but the toolpath was'nt any better (did'nt take the time to test cut 'em) from the previewer...

[jsfrost]

Thanks Paco,

No problem, I speak English only and still sometimes have problems translating.
The short answer is No. This weekend I'll try the cut in wood, but the toolpath shows unwanted cuts that I think will cause less than ideal results. Look for more on Monday, since I can not connect reliably from home. (Rural phonelines).

Jim

[bill.young]

Hey guys,

Just did some sample cutting in foam from Typesetter using a 90 degree V-bit...here's a picture of a Times New Roman "t" and the word "Text" using Impact.


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There are definitely some extra moves during the first pass in this version of Typesetter that don't seem to be neccessary, but they don't seem to show up in the carved letter. Paco discovered a problem with the Comic Sans "t" where the 2 parts don't cross correctly...we thought we had that issue solved in this version! We'll work to get the extra moves removed and the Comic Sans problem solved in the next version.

Paco...

If you could email me your typesetter.ini file...it's in C:\program files\shopbot\virtual tools\typesetter"... I can get the information on the fonts that have hung from there.

Bill

[paco]

OOoooooooooooooohhhhhhhh...
Interesting results Bill!
Thanks for your interest in this issue...!
You have mail.
Could we ever hope to have this kind of software able to V-carve any 2D closed design in our Virtual tools?!?!

[daniel_carr]

Paco,

VS3D can do V-bit carving from any true-type font.

The image below shows an example. The red lines show the path of the tool bit. The shaded surface shows the predicted results of the pass. VS3D can automatically adjust the tool height up and down so that the V-bit fills the width of the letter at that point.

The image may look like the letters are raised, but they are actually sunken in.



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